Soundbite: “Hidden” These New Puritans
By Christopher Robinson
March 1, 2010 8:02 p.m.
The hardest record to make is the sophomore record. It can make or break a career, and any important decisions about who you will be as an artist are often determined by how you handle the pressure of defining yourself with your second record. Some sophomore records changed everything.
Radiohead should have been one-hit wonders, but “The Bends” turned them into bearers of the alt-rock torch on their way to becoming one of the most acclaimed bands of the last 20 years. Nirvana’s “Nevermind” changed the face of mainstream rock radio almost overnight, turning an entire generation of kids into angst-ridden punk rockers. Then there’s the sophomore slump, which we’re all too familiar with, as some of our favorite debut records are followed-up by disappointing second efforts.
For These New Puritans, following up their debut album, “Beat Pyramid” didn’t exactly seem like a make-it-or-break-it affair. They weren’t hugely popular because of it, and the record got decent reviews.
The band must have thought this new record was going to be an important statement for them to make, because they decided to air it all out and go for broke. Make no mistake: “Hidden” is an art-rock masterpiece that shatters any previous notion you had about British post-punk bands, and turns These New Puritans into a band with ambitions grander than any of us could have previously imagined.
“Hidden” features Japanese taiko drums that reverberate with such insistence that you feel it in your bones, orchestral flourishes, demonic choirs, impenetrable lyrics, menacing keyboard textures and haunting melodies, all adding up to an album like you’ve never heard before. It’s all tied together by the unlikely and unsung wind instrument called the bassoon, which is featured on nearly every song while serving as the primary instrument in the instrumental overture of “Time Xone” and outro of “5.”
“Hidden” demands that you listen on good speakers or headphones; listening to it on your cheap iPod headphones is like looking at a thumbnail version of a Van Gogh or watching Avatar in black-and-white.
If the current effeminately beautiful and frail indie rock landscape just isn’t doing it for you, the aggressive and demanding sonic world of “Hidden” will blow you away.
The record is huge, sweeping and cinematic in scope, like a trip through Tim Burton’s twisted mind. Songs such as “We Want War” and “Orion” sound like sound tracks to World War III, while “5”³” sounds like a closing number to a nightmarish version of Mozart’s “Requiem.”
The album positively takes whatever it wants from various aesthetics, from post-punk to tribal ethnic beats to classical symphonic orchestration.
And that’s just what this album is: a symphony of sounds meant to be drowned in, meant to be felt, meant to be appreciated as an artistic achievement. It’s an early contender for album of the year, and it’s impossible to describe.
Perhaps the band puts it best in their own lyrics on “Fire-Power:” “this is a world attack/ this is a sound attack/ this is a word attack/ this is a mind attack.”
E-mail Robinson at [email protected].
